Kent Raible's Chopper-Granulation Shear

Designed by Kent Raible and made in the USA, the Chopper granulation shear is designed to make rapid, precise cuts of thin wire for mass producing the small lengths of gold or silver wire used in granulation.

The Chopper looks like a simple shear but it is much more than that.  The Chopper really packs a lot of well thought out engineering.  The reason you can make rapid cuts is that the stop side of the tool is spring loaded, so it moves down and out of the way as the shear side is actuated.  You can cut as many snippets of wire, as small as 0.1 mm in length, as fast as you can move the lever.  Kent says he can chop up to 8 times per second with his chopper.

You can also double load the Chopper with 0.4 mm wire and get twice as many snippets at one time for even faster production.

The Chopper is made for cutting very thin wire for granulation.  Kent uses 0.4 mm wire for this purpose, and cuts a variety of snippet lengths, mostly under 1.0 mm. The maximum wire diameter that you can feed through the chopper is 1.2 mm.

If you are using the chopper for simply cutting lengths of wire, the maximum repeatable length of wire that can be cut using the stop is 10 mm.

The Chopper has a slide that catches the snippets and allows for them to fall into the included container for securely holding your precious cuts.

Watch the video to see the chopper in action.